E-mails show reach of Abramoff's power

GOP chairman Mehlman accused of playing a role in firing of official in State Dept.

October 15, 2006|By Peter Wallsten | Peter Wallsten,Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- For five years, Allen Stayman wondered who ordered his removal from a State Department job negotiating agreements with tiny Pacific island nations - even when his bosses wanted him to stay.

Now he knows.

It came after intervention by one of the highest officials at the White House: Ken Mehlman, who acted on behalf of one of the most influential lobbyists in town, Jack Abramoff.

E-mails recently made public disclose that Abramoff, whose client list included the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, had long opposed Stayman's work advocating labor reforms in that U.S. protectorate and considered what his lobbying team called the "Stayman project" a high priority.

"Mehlman said he would get him fired," an Abramoff associate wrote after meeting with Mehlman, who was then White House political director.

The exchange illustrates how, more than two years after the corruption scandal surrounding the now-disgraced Abramoff first came to light, people are still learning the extent of the lobbyist's ability to pull the levers of power in Washington.

The latest revelations provide more detail than the administration has acknowledged about how Abramoff and his team reached into high levels of the White House, not just Capitol Hill, which has so far been the main focus of the influence-peddling investigation.

The e-mails, disclosed by the House Government Reform Committee, show how Abramoff managed to manipulate the system through officials like Mehlman, now the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Doing so, Abramoff directed government appointments, influenced policy decisions and won White House endorsements for political candidates - all in the service of his clients. The report found more than 400 lobbying contacts between Abramoff's team and the White House.

Besides the Stayman matter, the newly disclosed e-mails reveal Mehlman's role in helping an Abramoff client, the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw Indians, secure $16.3 million for a new jail that government analysts concluded was not necessary. Mehlman also helped Abramoff obtain a White House endorsement in 2002 of the Republican gubernatorial ticket in the U.S. territory of Guam.

Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to federal charges as part of a congressional bribery investigation that continues to loom over Capitol Hill and the GOP. A Senate subcommittee concluded that Abramoff fleeced Indian tribes out of millions of dollars in fees that he split with one of his associates.

The scandal has touched only one West Wing staffer, Susan Ralson, a one-time Abramoff aide who resigned this month as executive assistant to strategist Karl Rove after congressional investigators documented frequent contact with Abramoff's team.

Mehlman said he did not recall the details of his contacts with the Abramoff team, including discussions about Stayman, the former State Department official. However, he said such interactions were part of his job as White House political director.

"I was a gateway," Mehlman said in an interview. "It was my job to talk to political supporters, to hear their requests and hand them on to policymakers."

Mehlman said he had known Abramoff since the mid-1990s and would listen to his requests along with those from other influential Republicans.

"I know Jack," Mehlman said. "I certainly recall that if he and others wanted to meet, I would have met with them, as I would have met with lots of people."

Mehlman, a Pikesville native and graduate of Harvard Law School, has remained a GOP power player since stepping down as political director in 2003. He built the party's highly effective grassroots get-out-the-vote strategy, managing President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign before taking over the RNC last year.

Democrats charge that Mehlman might have acted unethically during his time at the White House, lobbying for government actions at Abramoff's behest, even when policy experts disagreed with the decision.

The senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, Democratic Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California, points to e-mails suggesting in the midst of negotiations over whether to fire Stayman, Mehlman requested two tickets in Abramoff's suite at the MCI Center (now the Verizon Center) to a sold-out U2 concert in June 2001.

Ethics rules prohibit officials from accepting gifts worth more than $20 from a person doing business with the government, although there are exceptions. Ethics officials typically consider such suite tickets to be worth the same as the most expensive tickets to an event, which in this case was $133 apiece, according to Waxman's office.

"Please tell me we can fit 2 more in for Friday," lobbyist and Abramoff partner Kevin Ring wrote to Abramoff. "Ken Mehlman of the White House apparently wants to go." On the day before the concert, Ring wrote to Abramoff that a resume for a Stayman replacement has been "sent to our conduit."